c  vft  ^ 


FEB  g  A  1918 


Series  VII.  NOVB&BfEIR  IStll. .....  Nos.  1  and  2. 


-rmr  'S  library 


'■'m  *  -  uir 

BULLETIN  OF 


CENTRAL  COLLEGE 


FAYETTE,  MISSOURI 


BENEFACTORS’  DAY  ADDRESS 


The  Discovery  of  the  Philosopher’s  Stone 

By  REV.  JAMES  W.  LEE,  D.  D., 

Pantor  of  St.  John's  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South, 

St.  Louis. 


The  Bulletin  of  Central  College  is  published  quarterly 
by  the  College.  Entered  at  Fayette,  Missouri,  as  second- 
class  mail  matter. 


p 


& /  'ft  i  i  r 


"ftssny  of  tui«o>s  ubrarv 


urn  l  9  m? 


Bulletin  of  Central  College 

SERIES  VII.  FAYETTE,  MO.,  NOVEMBER,  1911  Nos.  I  and  2. 


The  Discovery  of  the  Philosopher’s  Stone. 

By  Rev.  James  W.  Lee,  D.  D. 

President  Webb,  in  connection  with  the  invitation 
he  sent  me  to  deliver  the  Benefactors’  Day  address, 
intimated  that  I  could  select  my  own  subject. 

I  can  hardly  think  of  any  subject  having  to  do 
with  literary,  philosophical,  scientific,  or  political  ques¬ 
tions  but  would  furnish  ample  material  for  an  address 
appropriate  to  the  spirit  which  led  to  the  establishment 
of  Benefactors’  Day  in  Central  College.  Those  noble 
men,  who,  by  their  gifts,  have  made  Central  College 
possible,  had  in  view  the  training  of  students  in  all 
lines  of  study,  so  that  if  I  were  to  give  an  address  on 
architecture,  or  painting,  or  music,  or  agriculture,  or 
-  theology,  or  literature,  it  would  be  perfectly  in  keeping 
with  the  occasion,  which  calls  us  together  tonight.  I 
have  chosen  as  the  subject  of  my  address,  “The  Dis¬ 
covery  of  the  Philosopher’s  Stone.” 

^  The  most  remarkable  achievement  in  the  history 
of  human  research  was  the  discovery  of  the  Philoso¬ 
pher’s  Stone  in  1898.  This  event  is  brilliant  enough 
to  make  luminous  forever  the  period  in  which  we  live. 
When  the  French  soldiers  in  1798  dug  the  Rosetta 
Stone  from  the  mud  of  the  Nile,  they  put  the  key  to 
Egyptian  learning  in  the  hands  of  scholars  and  uncon¬ 
sciously  did  the  only  thing  that  justified  the  invasion 
of  the  country  by  Napoleon.  But  the  history  of  an  an- 

—3— 


cient  people  learned  men  are  able  to  read  out  of  the 
hieroglyphics  by  means  of  the  Rosetta  Stone  is  as  a 
spark  to  the  sun  in  comparison  to  the  history  of  Crea¬ 
tion  students  of  science  are  able  to  read  out  of  the  uni¬ 
verse  by  means  of  the  discovery  of  the  Philosopher’s 
Stone. 

I. 

Ever  since  man  began  to  think  he  has  had  a  con¬ 
viction  that  all  things  were  made  by  some  one  thing. 

Nights  have  never  been  still  enough  and  sleep  has 
never  been  profound  enough  to  shut  the  human  mind 
from  the  dream  that  the  strands  from  which  the  uni¬ 
versal  order  are  braided  were  drawn  from  the  same 
kind  of  yarn.  Thales  thought  the  worlds  were  spun 
out  of  water.  Diogenes,  of  Apollonia,  believed  they 
were  twisted  out  of  air.  Heraclitus  said  the  raw  ma¬ 
terial  of  immensity  was  fire.  Plato  held  that  the  em-  \ 

broidery  of  Creation  was  crocheted  out  of  ideas.  The 
quest  of  the  Greeks  was  for  some  single  principle  by 
which  they  could  account  for  the  reality  of  being. 

They  sought  the  “by  word”  that  would  open  the  door 
to  them  into  the  free-masonry  of  existence.  They 
looked  for  the  substance  out  of  which  all  things  came 
and  back  into  which  they  could  all  be  turned  again. 

Had  they  defined  to  themselves  the  Philosopher’s 
Stone,  they  would  have  represented  it  as  standing  for 
the  answer  to  the  riddle  of  reality. 

The  Egyptians,  unlike  the  Greeks,  were  a  practical 
and  not  a  speculative  people.  They  preferred  corn  to 
feed  their  bodies  on  to  first  principles  to  feed  their 
minds  on.  In  their  esteem  the  earth  was  a  granary 
and  not  a  library,  a  packing  house  and  not  a  college,  a 
dining  room  to  eat  in  and  not  a  study  to  think  in. 

They  preferred  luxury  to  logic,  as  the  savage  in  Africa 
today  longs  for  fresh  meat  to  match  his  hunger  far 
more  than  for  the  reticulations  of  mental  wheelwork  to 
match  his  wonder.  It  was  their  custom  to  suck  the 
juice  direct  from  the  orange  of  existence  instead  of 
finding  reasons  for  its  shape  and  color  and  content.  It 

—4— 


was  in  accordance  with  their  ideas  to  drinx  down 
straight  the  sugar  from  the  watermelon  of  life  rather 
than  "to  try  to  find  out  how  it  grew  green  and  round  on 
the  vine.  *  Hence,  they  narrowed  the  meaning  of  the 
Philosopher’s  Stone  to  the  dimensions  of  a  fact  that 
could  be  cashed  in  the  coin  of  the  realm.  They  saw  no 
use  for  a  theory  that  could  not,  as  a  servant,  he  made  to 
accomplish  practical  results.  They  believed  certain 
elements  were  lving  around  loose  in  Nature,  from 
which,  if  found,  they  could  distill  a  concoction 
that  would  turn  base  metals  into  noble  ones.  They 
never  succeeded  in  transmuting  one  metal  into  another, 
but  the  contagion  of  their  efforts  to  find  the  secret  of 
doing  it  spread  to  the  different  nations  of  Europe. 
From  the  fourth  Century  A.  D.  down  to  the  death  of 
Balsamo  in  1795  many  of  the  most  distinguished  men 
in  history  spent  their  time  and  thought  and  money  in 
the  effort  to  find  the  Philosopher’s  Stone.  Belief  in 
the  Philosopher’s  Stone  constituted  the  creed  of  great 
church  fathers,  like  Thomas  Aquinas;  philosophers, 
like  Albertus  Magnus;  students  of  Nature,  like  Roger 
Bacon;  and  pantheistic  mystics,  like  Jacob  Bohmen. 
Accomplished  fakers,  like  Nicholas  Flamel,  Mareclial 
de  Rays,  Count  St.  Germain  and  Count  Cagliostro,  tak¬ 
ing  advantage  of  the  credulity  of  the  people,  made  vast 
fortunes  by  the  sale  of  complicated  mixtures  they  de¬ 
clared  would  turn  lead  into  gold. 

Faith  in  the  Philosopher’s  Stone  declined  with  the 
gradual  development  of  the  Science  of  Chemistry. 
After  the  publication  of  John  Dalton’s  New  System  of 
Chemical  Philosophy  in  1808,  the  last  foot  of  ground 
left  for  the  alchemists  to  stand  on  seemed  to  be  de¬ 
stroyed.  According  to  the  doctrine  of  Democritus  and 
Lucretius  atoms  were  the  foundation  stones  of  the 
heavens  and  the  earth.  Earth  and  air  and  fire  and 
water  could  all  be  divided  and  subdivided  on  and  on 
and  down  and  down  to  finer  and  finer  points, 
but  at  length  the  limit  was  reached,  and  the 
final,  ultimate  end  of  every  material  thing 
was  the  atom.  Beyond  the  atom  there  was 


—5— 


nothing.  Having  the  accnmulated  results  of  pa¬ 
tient  study  for  more  than  two  thousand  years  to  assist 
him,  Dalton  was  able  to  lay  for  the  atom  a  firmer  and 
broader  foundation  than  ever  Democritus  and  Lucre¬ 
tius  were  able  to  do.  After  Dalton’s  genius  had  dis¬ 
closed  the  place  and  importance  of  the  atom,  the  world 
of  the  alchemists  was  thought  to  be  an  unchartered  wil¬ 
derness  lying  outside  the  track  of  progress.  From 
1808  down  to  the  beginning  of  the  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  more  and  more  was  made  of  the 
atom.  Meteors,  moons  and  vast  planets,  whirling  in 
space,  were  all  made  up  of  tiny,  little,  impenetrable, 
unbreakable  bits,  called  atoms.  Blazing  suns  and  pon¬ 
derous  worlds  hurtling  through  space  on  billion-mile 
journeys  were  all  made  of  atoms.  A  million-billion  of 
these  dumb  infinitesimal  balls  are  contained  in  a 
speck  of  matter  big  enough  to  see  with  the  naked  eye. 
If  one ’s  power  of  vision  were  increased  a  million  billion 
times,  he  would  be  able  to  see  the  atoms  rebounding, 
Hying  and  colliding  around  him  like  so  many  bullets. 
The  trillions  of  quadrillions  of  quintillions  of  atoms 
contained  in  the  water  sufficient  to  fill  the  boiler  of  a 
steam  engine  can  be  inflamed  and  scourged  by  heat 
until  they  become  mad  enough  to  draw  a  freight  train 
over  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

II. 

Thinking  of  atoms  as  impenetrable  and  final  and 
as  endowed  with  such  wonderful  gifts  of  doing  things, 
the  opinion  became  fixed  among  many  of  the  leading 
scientific  men  in  the  seventies  of  the  last  century  that 
there  was  no  place  for  intelligent  will  in  the  universe. 
The  atoms  themselves  were  regarded  by  many  as  hav¬ 
ing  sense.  Haeckel  said  they  had  sensation  and  will. 
Clifford  declared  them  to  be  mind-stuff.  Tyndall  said 
they  manifested  desire  for  union.  Thus  the  conclusion 
was  reached  that  the  universe  was  a  machine  with  ca¬ 
pacity  inhering  in  its  wheels  to  turn  itself.  The  mater¬ 
ialistic  tide,  beginning  in  Greece  with  Empedocles, 
Leucippus,  Democritus,  and  Epicurus,  and  flowing 

—6— 


steadily  over  Rome  from  the  time  of  Lucretius,  had  at 
length  reached  its  tide  with  Dalton  and  Tyndall  and 
now  threatened  to  flood  all  the  shores  of  the  modern 
mind. 

Thinking  of  the  atoms  as  having  free-will  as 
Lucretius  did,  or  as  having  sensation  and  will  as 
Haeckel  did,  or  as  being  so  much  mind-stuff  as  Clifford 
did,  the  materialists  were  able  to  see  how  all  worlds 
were  spun  by  them  as  if  they  were  so  many  little 
spiders,  out  of  their  entrails,  and  then  left  round, 
opaque,  wheeling  webs  in  the  heavens. 

III. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  why  those  who  be¬ 
lieved  the  universe  to  be  a  machine,  the  wheels  of 
which  were  self-whirling  atoms,  had  no  place  for  cre¬ 
ative  mind.  If  the  atoms,  of  which  all  things  were 
built,  were  little  bricks  of  matter  self-fashioned  to 
points  so  fine  that  they  could  be  cut  no  further,  and  had 
the  necessary  self-activity  for  laying  themselves  up 
in  the  walls  of  the  heavens,  and  for  wheeling  them¬ 
selves  into  the  gable  ends  and  rafters  and  roofs  of  the 
constellations,  what  was  the  use  of  a  God  sitting  idly 
by  to  watch  them  work?  What  use  was  there  for  an 
overseer  on  the  plantation,  if  the  hands  worked  as  well 
and  accomplished  as  much  without  his  presence  as  with 
it?  There  seemed  to  be  no  reason  for  bringing  the 
Eternal  Mind  from  some  transcendental  whither  to  do 
work  in  a  system  equipped  for  doing  everything  that 
could  be  done  without  it.  They  saw  no  way  to  bridge 
the  chasm  between  things  and  thought,  between  mind 
and  matter.  Even  if  the  universe  of  the  tangible 
needed  any  outside  assistance,  there  was  no  nook  nor 
cranny  through  which  a  God  could  get  into  the 
mechanical  order.  Every  crevice  and  roadway  was 
closed  against  him.  All  the  gates  were  shut  tight 
against  any  divine  invasion  of  the  territory  bounded  by 
time  and  space. 

IV. 

This  was  the  situation  as  looked  at  from  the  stand¬ 
point  of  the  scientists  forty  years  ago. 


A  few  years  later  Sir  William  Crookes,  while  ex¬ 
amining  the  actions  of  particles  of  matter  in  a  bulb 
from  which  the  air  had  been  taken,  saw  that  they  had 
properties  not  possessed  by  ordinary  matter.  He  con¬ 
cluded  that  he  had  actually  touched  the  borderland 
where  matter  and  force  merged  into  one  another,  the 
shadowy  realm  between  the  known  and  the  unknown. 
In  1895  Roentgen  discovered  the  X-rays,  while  experi¬ 
menting  further  with  vacuum  tubes.  In  1896  Henri 
Becquerel  discovered  that  the  salts  of  uranium  had  the 
power  of  spontaneously  emitting  invisible  radiations, 
which  affect  photographic  paper,  and  pass  through 
metals  and  discharge  electrified  bodies.  Thus  strange 
discoveries  were  being  made  by  looking  into  regions 
never  penetrated  before.  The  frontiers  of  new  lands 
were  being  entered  and  marvelous  were  the  tales 
brought  back  by  the  daring  explorers. 

V. 

In  1898  Madame  Curie  and  her  husband,  after  in¬ 
finite  pains,  succeeded  in  discovering  radium.  This 
event  stirred  the  world  of  science  far  more  deeply  than 
the  declaration  of  Professor  Tyndall  in  his  Belfast  ad- 
dress  in  1874  moved  the  world  of  faith.  Democritus 
and  Lucretius  and  Dalton  and  Tyndall  and  all  the 
other  believers  in  the  hard,  impenetrable,  unbreakable 
atom  were  put  out  of  business  in  a  single  day.  Theo¬ 
ries  of  philosophy  hoary  with  age,  as  well  as  newest 
systems  built  on  them  toppled  with  sudden  and  world¬ 
resounding  crash  into  ruins.  The  very  foundations  of 
Creation  itself  seemed  to  be  upset.  The  discovery  of 
radium  meant  so  much  that  it  will  take  the  slow,  poky 
minds  of  the  rank  and  file  of  men  a  hundred  years  to 
understand  all  that  was  involved  in  it.  One  of  the  most 
amazing  things  about  it  was  that  the  dreams  of  the 
alchemists  were  found  to  be  true,  more  than  a  century 
after  the  last  one  of  them  was  dead.  The  Philosopher’s 
Stone  was  a  vast,  revolutionizing  fact  after  all,  and  had 
at  last  been  brought  out  of  darkness  into  light,  had 
been  brought  from  the  realm  of  fancy  into  fact.  The 


—8— 


quest  of  tlie  ages  since  the  days  of  old  Thales  had  been 
found.  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Albertus  Magnus  and 
Boger  Bacon,  who  had  died  believing  in  the  transmuta¬ 
bility  of  the  metals,  were  vindicated.  When  radium 
was  discovered,  a  form  of  matter  was  found  the  atoms 
of  which  were  in  the  act  of  breaking  down.  Never  be¬ 
fore  had  the  inside  of  atoms  been  seen.  They  had  kept 
their  little  souls  locked  out  of  sight  since  the  founda¬ 
tions  of  the  world  were  laid.  It  was  seen  that  the 
atoms  in  a  small  speck  of  radium  had  force  enough 
packed  away  in  their  little  insides  to  keep  a  bell  ring¬ 
ing  for  hundreds  of  years,  or  to  keep  a  globe  of  light 
blazing  for  hundreds  of  years.  It  was  found  that  the 
vastest  stores  of  energy  were  not  in  the  coal  beds,  but 
inside  the  atoms  of  which  the  coal  beds  were  formed. 
And  while  a  million  billion  of  atoms  are  necessary  to 
make  up  a  speck  of  matter  large  enough  to  be  seen  with 
the  naked  eve,  vet  each  atom  of  this  million  billion  of 
them  has  inside  itself  from  one  thousand  to  more  than 
two  hundred  thousand  electrons,  or  corpuscles,  or  bits 
of  electricity,  making  revolutions  at  a  high  rate  of 
speed  as  the  planets  are  turning  round  the  sun  in  the 
heavens.  It  was  learned  not  only  that  the  electrical 
corpuscles  are  wheeling  on  circles  inside  each  atom, 
but  the  key  was  also  found  for  determining  precisely 
how  many  corpuscles  each  atom  contained.  Hydrogen 
being  the  lightest  of  all  the  elements,  its  atom  contains 
just  one  thousand  more  electrons  than  its  atomic 
weight.  Its  weight  being  one,  its  interior  self  houses 
one  thousand  electrons.  The  atomic  weight  of  gold  is 
197,  therefore,  each  gold  atom  contains  within  itself 
197,000  electrons.  Lead  with  206  for  its  atomic  weight 
contains  atoms  filled  with  206,000  corpuscles  each. 
Find  the  atomic  weight  of  any  of  the  eighty  chemical 
elements,  and  multiply  that  number  by  1000  and  you 
have  the  number  of  corpuscles  contained  in  each  one 
of  its  atoms. 

VI. 

It  was  learned  that  though  the  number  of  cor¬ 
puscles  in  each  atom  was  different,  yet  the  corpuscles 

—9— 


themselves  were  all  precisely  alike.  For  instance, 
there  are  206,000  corpuscles  in  each  atom  of  lead,  and 
there  are  197,000  corpuscles  in  each  atom  of  gold,  but 
the  corpuscles  in  an  atom  of  lead  are  exactly  like  those 
in  an  atom  of  gold.  Thus,  in  order  to  turn  lead  into 
gold,  it  would  only  be  necessary  to  take  9,000  corpus¬ 
cles  out  of  one  of  its  atoms  and  a  gold  atom  would  be 
the  result.  Iron  has  55,000  corpuscles  in  each  one  of  its 
atoms,  and  silver  has  107,000  corpuscles  in  each  one  of 
its  atoms.  If  you  will  take  out  of  an  atom  of  silver 
52,000  electrons,  you  will  have  left  an  atom  of  iron,  or 
if  you  will  add  52,000  electrons  taken  from  some  other 
element  to  the  corpuscles  of  your  iron  atom,  you  will 
get  silver.  Sir  J.  J.  Thompson  says  that  man  will  know 
some  day  doubtless  as  well  how  to  get  hold  of  the  elec¬ 
trons  and  mix  them  to  make  what  he  wants,  as  he 
knows  today  how  to  combine  hydrogen  and  oxygen  to 
get  water. 


VII. 

All  this  is  amazing  enough  to  take  people’s  breath 
away,  but  something  more  astounding  still  has  been 
found  out  about  corpuscles,  and  that  is  their  vast  en¬ 
ergy.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  says  it  has  been  calculated  that 
the  collapsing  of  the  corpuscles,  or  electrical  constit¬ 
uents  of  a  radium  atom,  by  so  little  as  one  per  cent  of 
their  distance  apart  can  supply  the  whole  of  the  energy 
of  its  observed  radiation  for  something  like  thirty 
thousand  years.  The  corpuscle  is  so  small  that  in 
comparison  with  the  size  of  the  atom  in  which  it  re¬ 
volves  it  is  as  a  grain  of  sand  to  a  cathedral.  And  yet 
these  little  corpuscles,  when  by  any  means  they  get  out¬ 
side  the  atom  of  which  they  form  a  part,  shoot  forth 
with  a  velocity  that,  according  to  LeBon,  could  be 
equalled  by  a  bullet  only  if  it  had  one  million  three  hun¬ 
dred  and  forty  thousand  barrels  of  gunpowder  behind 
it.  Corpuscles  travel  so  fast  in  their  small  orbits  inside 
the  atom,  that  the  same  rate  of  speed  in  a  straight  line 
would  take  them  from  the  earth  to  the  moon  in  four 
seconds.  There  is  force  enough  inside  an  old-fashioned 

—10— 


/ 


copper  cent  piece,  if  it  could  be  released,  to  pull  a 
large  freight  train  four  times  and  a  quarter  the  cir¬ 
cumference  of  the  earth.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  says  that 
the  electrons  are  as  much  faster  than  a  cannon  ball  as 
a  cannon  ball  is  faster  than  a  snail.  Sir  J.  J.  Thomp¬ 
son  says  that  a  few  grains  weight  of  hydrogen  has 
within  its  corpuscles  enough  force  to  raise  a  million 
tons  to  a  height  of  more  than  three  hundred  feet.  Max 
Abraham  calculates  that  one  gramme’s  weight  of 
corpuscles  contains  energy  equal  to  eighty  billion 
horse  power  per  second. 

Sir  J.  J.  Thompson  said  in  his  presidential  address 
before  the  British  Association  held  in  Winnipeg,  Can¬ 
ada,  in  1909,  that  in  one  gramme  of  hydrogen,  that  is. 
in  one-thirtieth  of  an  ounce  of  hydrogen  there  are  about 
6  x  10  (raised  to  the  23rd  degree)  atoms,  and  that  the 
energy  due  to  the  corpuscles  in  a  gramme  of  hydrogen 
is  equal  to  11  x  10  (raised  to  the  9th  degree)  calories, 
or  heat  measures. 

VIII. 

I  have  pointed  out  before  that  the  atoms  of  hy¬ 
drogen  and  oxygen  combined  in  water  sufficient  to  fill 
the  boiler  of  an  engine  could  be  scourged  by  heat  into 
anger  sufficient  to  impel  them  to  draw  a  freight  train 
over  the  Rocky  Mountains.  But  the  force  developed 
by  scourging  the  atoms  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen  from 
the  outside  of  themselves  is  not  a  millionth  part  of  the 
force  that  could  be  secured  from  the  inside  of  them. 
There  is,  perhaps,  enough  force  inside  the  atoms  of  an 
engine  boiler  full  of  water  to  take  a  train  from  here 
to  San  Francisco  and  back  one  hundred  thousand 
times.  This  can  be  understood  when  we  remember 
that  the  corpuscles  inside  the  atoms  are  revolving  in 
their  orbits  at  an  unthinkable  rate  of  speed  per  sec¬ 
ond.  Their  great  energy  is  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
are  moving  so  fast. 

IX. 

The  conclusion  students  have  reached,  then,  is  that 
matter  is  constituted  of  electricity,  and  that  electricity 


—ll— 


is  nothing  bnt  brilliant  mist  rising  up  from  the  ether 
sea.  Ether  has  been  defined  as  the  nominative  case  of 
the  verb  to  undulate.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  says  that  the 
intrinsic  energy  of  the  constitution  of  the  ether  is  so  in¬ 
credibly,  so  portentously  great  that  every  cubic  milli¬ 
meter  of  space  possesses  what,  if  it  were  matter,  would 
be  a  mass  of  a  thousand  tons  and  would  contain  energy 
equivalent  to  the  output  of  a  million  horse  power  sta¬ 
tion  for  forty  million  years.  We  can  understand  there¬ 
fore,  why  the  corpuscles,  which  are  flying  around  with 
such  velocity  inside  the  atoms,  have  such  tremendous 
power.  The  pressure  of  the  ether  is  so  great  that  it 
equals  10,000  tons  per  square  millimeter.  Matter, 
therefore,  is  nothing  but  areas  of  the  diminished  den¬ 
sity  of  ether.  When  the  ether  moves  out  into  gossamer, 
filmy,  imperceptible  mist,  we  call  it  matter.  Matter 
then  is  made  of  atoms,  and  atoms  are  made  of  corpus¬ 
cles,  or  points  of  electricity,  and  electricity  is  made  of 
ether,  and  ether  is  coterminous  with  the  whole  sum  of 
things.  Ether  is  force,  but  imponderable  and  immate¬ 
rial.  It  is  as  subtle  and  as  distant  from  what  we  know" 
as  ordinary  matter  as  thought  is.  Ether  is  the  ever¬ 
lasting  dwelling  place  of  eternal  intelligence.  It  con¬ 
stitutes  the  vehicle  through  which  the  Creator  works. 
God  is  not  imprisoned  in  it.  He  transcends  it.  But  He 
uses  it  as  the  raw  material  out  of  which  to  make 
worlds. 

Thus,  when  we  resolve  matter  into  ether,  we  are 
compelled  to  admit  that  not  a  wave  of  it  can  ever  move 
out  into  any  created  thing  without  the  thought  and  will 
of  the  Almighty. 

Evervone  can  see  that  the  action  of  a  force  can 
not  be  determined  by  a  force,  and  that  motion  can  not 
be  determined  by  motion.  That  the  action  of  a  force 
can  not  be  determined  by  a  force  is  demonstrable. 
For,  if  the  action  of  a  force  is  determined  by  an  act, 
then  the  act  itself  must  have  been  determined  by  a  pre¬ 
ceding  act,  and  this  preceding  act  by  another,  and  so 

on  in  like  manner  to  infinitv.  If  the  front  one  of  a 

•/ 

thousand  billiard  balls  in  a  row  is  seen  to  move,  we  are 


— 12 


compelled  to  infer  that  it  was  propelled  by  some  power 
other  than  and  outside  itself.  When  we  are  taught  by 
science,  therefore,  that  all  matter  is  made  of  force,  we 
are  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the  force  taking  the 
various  forms  of  matter  is  the  expression  of  the  eternal 
will  of  the  Creator.  So  at  last  we  see  that  Plato  was 
right  when  he  taught  that  all  things  we  see  are  but 
ideas  clothing  themselves  in  the  forms  of  matter. 

X. 

The  Philosopher’s  Stone  with  Thales  was  water; 
the  Philosopher’s  Stone  with  Democritus  and  Dalton 
was  atoms;  the  Philosopher’s  Stone  with  the  modern 
scientists  is  electricity,  and  then,  when  further  an¬ 
alyzed,  is  ether,  and  ether  has  now  been  shown  to  be 
force,  and  finally,  back  of  force  is  thought,  and  thought 
is  the  expression  of  the  eternal  mind  of  God.  The 
Philosopher’s  Stone,  then,  as  far  as  so-called  material 
things  go,  is  thought.  All  things  are  the  expression  of 
thought.  Thought  is  the  foundation  principle  of  the 
created  universe.  Thought  is  the  Philosopher’s  Stone 
in  the  universe  of  things.  It  is  amazing  that  science 
brings  us  back  to  idealism  as  the  working  principle  of 
the  sum  of  things.  What  we  call  matter,  then,  is  not 
matter  in  the  ordinary  acceptation  of  the  term;  it  is 
thought  in  the  form  of  whirling,  seething  bits  from  the 
sea  of  ether.  It  is  thought  in  the  form  of  ether.  We 
call  things  hard.  There  is  nothing  hard.  Pocks  are 
soft,  and  seem  to  be  rigid  because  made  up  of  particles 
going  fast.  A  hard  thing  is  a  soft  thing  going  fast. 
The  hard,  fixed  appearance  of  the  mountains  and  the 
earth  are  simply  a  case  of  cinematographic  continuity 
like  the  scenery  in  a  five  cent  picture  show.  The  car¬ 
riage  seems  to  be  coming  down  the  road  and  the 
robbers  seem  to  be  holding  the  parties  in  it  up,  but  in¬ 
stead  of  there  being  one  scene,  there  are  thousands  of 
them  thrown  together  in  a  single  picture.  So,  instead 
of  seeing  the  Shasta  Mountains  as  you  pass  from  Port¬ 
land  to  San  Francisco  as  solid,  stolid,  hard  piles  rising 
into  the  sky,  you  see  a  cinematographic  aggregation  of 
billions  of  quadrillions  of  sextillions  of  atoms,  multi- 

— 13 — 


plied  over  and  over  again  and  again  by  as  many  tril¬ 
lions  of  atoms  each  filled  with  thousands  of  corpuscles 
and  all  together  going  so  fast  that  they  make  a  huge 
heap  that  seems  to  he  hard  and  single. 

Halley’s  Comet  is  nothing  but  a  cinematographic 
picture  show,  making  a  seven  billion  mile  tour  every 
seventy-five  years,  giving  free  exhibitions  to  planets 
like  the  Earth  and  Mars  and  Uranus  and  Neptune. 

XL 

We  hear  a  great  deal  today  about  what  is  called 
New  Thought  and  it  is  remarkable  what  great  things 
can  be  accomplished  by  exercising  the  intelligence  in 
the  direction  of  God’s  thought.  Many  diseases  can  be 
cured  simply  by  getting  in  line  with  the  ideas  ex¬ 
pressed  in  the  Universe  by  the  Infinite  Mind.  But  we 
can  not,  by  thinking,  arrest  the  habits  of  the  universe. 
Many  ailments  can  be  healed  by  thinking  in  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  the  laws  of  God.  We  hear  it  often  said  today 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  matter, and  it  is  correct 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  matter  as  the  ordinary 
mortal  thinks  about  it.  But  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
the  definite  combination  of  atoms  into  bodies,  which, 
in  the  last  analysis,  are  corpuscles,  and  finally,  and  ulti¬ 
mately,  ether.  Now  the  thoughts  of  the  Eternal  Mind, 
which  express  themselves  in  oxygen,  gold,  platinum, 
arsenic,  etc.,  are  filled  with  dynamite.  They  can  not 
be  trifled  with.  They  were  expressed  along  definite 
lines  and  intended  to  accomplish  definite  results. 

XII. 

The  human  body,  for  instance,  is  made  up  of  oxy¬ 
gen,  hydrogen,  nitrogen,  carbon,  with  a  little  mixture 
of  iron,  lime,  soda  and  phosphorus,  besides  traces  of 
compounds  known  as  chondrin,  osmazome,  cholesterin 
and  resin.  In  each  oxygen  atom  in  the  human  body 
there  are  16,000  corpuscles,  in  each  hydrogen  atom 
there  are  1,000  corpuscles,  in  the  carbon  atom  12,000 
corpuscles,  in  the  nitrogen  atom  14,000  corpuscles,  in 
the  iron  55,000  corpuscles,  in  the  phosphorus  atom  31,- 
000  corpuscles,  etc.  All  these  corpuscles  are  points  of 
electricity. 


—14— 


XIII. 

Man’s  body  is  so  much  palpitating  lightning.  In 
man  we  have  so  much  of  the  Aurora  Borealis  breathing. 
Now,  to  get  health  and  peace  and  strength  out  of  light¬ 
ning  and  Aurora  Borealis,  there  must  be  the  most  exact 
conformity  to  the  laws  of  the  marvelous  mixture  of 
molecules  out  of  which  man’s  body  is  built.  There  is 
not  such  a  combination  of  forces  under  the  sun  as  is 
found  in  the  body  of  man.  Now,  it  is  an  absolute  law 
that  nothing  can  be  taken  into  the  body  without  danger 
except  something  that  has  its  duplicate  already  in  the 
body.  You  can  get  strength  from  milk  and  eggs  and 
meat  and  bread  and  fruit  and  vegetables,  because  the 
oxygen,  hydrogen,  nitrogen,  carbon,  iron,  lime,  soda, 
phosphorus,  ehondrin,  osmazome,  cholesterin  and 
resin  which  constitute  the  body  of  man  are  found  in 
milk  and  eggs  and  meat  and  bread  and  vegetables. 
The  corpuscles  in  these  forms  of  food  match  the  cor¬ 
puscles  of  which  man’s  body  is  made.  But  arsenic  is 
an  element  with  75,000  corpuscles  in  each  one  of  its 
atoms.  If  one  should  undertake  to  put  a  bottle  of 
arsenic  into  his  body,  he  would  find  that  there  being 
nothing  in  the  body  to  match  the  arsenic,  the  attempt 
of  the  body  to  arrest  the  effect  of  the  arsenic  would  re¬ 
sult  in  his  death.  Man  can  not,  by  thinking,  arrest  the 
effect  of  an  element  taken  into  his  system  for  which  his 
body  has  no  affinity  and  no  need.  God  made  arsenic  by 
taking  75,000  corpuscles  and  putting  them  together. 
So  arsenic  is  His  thought,  and  if  man  could  arrest  its 
effect  in  the  system  by  a  thought  of  his,  then  it  would 
follow  that  a  thought  of  the  Infinite  could  be  held  up 
by  a  thought  of  the  finite.  Every  form  of  matter,  as  a 
thought  of  God,  acts  in  accordance  with  the  most  exact 
law.  The  laws  of  God  really  constitute  the  love  of  God. 
and  love  is  as  deadly  as  dynamite  when  you  get  into 
wrong  relations  with  it.  All  the  quadrillions  of  atoms 
have  each  their  own  role  and  play  it  in  exactly  the 
same  fashion.  The  laws  of  the  Universe  may  be  re¬ 
garded  as  the  summing  up  of  the  promises  of  God.  It 
is  the  promise  of  God  in  the  law  of  gravitation  that  if 

—15— 


you  keep  your  feet  on  the  ground,  you  will  be  main¬ 
tained  in  peace,  but  it  is  also  the  promise  of  God  in  the 
law  of  gravitation  that  if  you  climb  to  the  top  of  a 
church  steeple  with  the  vain  hope  that  God  being  good 
will  take  care  of  you  and  thus  presuming  on  His  love, 
jump  to  the  ground,  it  will  follow  that  you  will  be 
killed,  nevertheless.  It  is  a  promise  of  God  in  combus¬ 
tion  that,  if  you  jump  into  a  furnace,  you  will  be  burnt. 
When  an  illiterate,  hysterical  champion  of  New 
Thought,  with  no  knowledge  of  the  promises  of  God  in 
the  laws  of  the  Universe,  with  no  mental  training  as  to 
the  meaning  of  God’s  thought  expressed  in  Nature, 
rises  up  to  tell  us  that  evil  and  disease  can  be  blotted 
from  the  life  of  humanitv  in  anv  other  manner  than  by 
conforming  to  God’s  law,  he  should  not  be  taken  seri¬ 
ously.  Such  a  man  would  not  do  the  slightest  harm  to 
people  trained  to  think,  but  there  are  many  poor, 
ignorant,  mentally-belated  specimens  of  humanity  in 
the  world  and  these  would  be  in  danger  of  ruin  if 
they  should  undertake  to  put  into  practice  such  crude 
thinking.  Things  have  certain  properties  in  them¬ 
selves  and  our  thoughts  can  not  take  them  away.  Pain 
and  disease  are  realities  just  as  fire  is  a  reality.  The 
conception  of  life  that  leads  one  to  think  that  fire  will 
not  burn  is  really  a  lapse  into  the  incoherent,  inconse¬ 
quent  and  capricious  idea  of  Nature  held  by  the  primi¬ 
tive  mind  of  the  savage.  To  say  that  microbes,  when 
they  begin  to  bite  and  eat  away  the  health  of  a  mao, 
are  not  real  things,  is  like  saying  that  the  tiger,  ready 
to  devour  the  hunter  is  not  a  real,  striped  thing.  A 
tubercle  bacillus  inside  one’s  lungs  is  as  real  as  a  rattle 
snake  outside  one’s  leg.  The  negroes  down  South 
bought  comet  pills  from  fakers  in  1910  to  insure  them¬ 
selves  against  the  perils  they  feared  were  ablaze  in  the 
streamers  of  Halley’s  Comet.  But  no  one  trained  to 
think  could  ever  believe  that  pills  of  any  sort  would 
have  the  slightest  effect  in  saving  people  from  what¬ 
ever  perils  there  might  be  in  Halley’s  Comet,  or  in  the 
San  Francisco  earthquake,  or  in  the  Johnstown  flood. 


—16— 


XIV. 

The  Philosopher’s  Stone,  then,  in  the  realm  of 
things  is  the  thought  of  God.  The  Philosopher’s  Stone 
in  the  realm  of  spirit  is  the  love  of  God.  God  is  Infinite 
Spirit,  man  is  finite  spirit.  God,  as  Spirit,  is  defined  in 
the  Scripture  as  love,  and  man,  as  spirit,  when  he  lives 
up  to  what  he  essentially  and  potentially  is,  is  love. 
When  man  loves  God  with  all  his  heart  and  mind  and 
soul  and  strength,  he  conforms  to  the  laws  of  his  own 
being  and  to  the  divinely-implanted  potential  power  to 
lead  a  holy  life.  When  man  by  the  grace  of  God  in 
Jesus  Christ  loves,  he  is  himself,  really,  essentially  and 
fundamentally.  Love  is  the  raw  material  of  man ’s  be¬ 
ing.  In  loving,  he  becomes  himself  as  a  child  of  God, 
himself  as  an  expression  in  human  form  of  the  love  of 
God.  All  material  things  are  expressions  of  thought, 
clothing  itself  in  the  forms  of  ether.  All  self-conscions 
beings  are  expressions  of  love,  clothed  in  forms  of  hu¬ 
manity.  In  coming  back  to  ether,  planets,  rocks,  moun¬ 
tains,  seas  and  forests  come  back  home,  come  back  to 
the  origin  of  themselves,  come  back  to  that  out  of 
which  they  were  made.  So  man,  in  coming  back  to 
love,  comes  to  the  home  of  himself,  the  origin  of  him¬ 
self,  the  reality  of  himself,  the  raw  material  of  himself. 
Take  the  ether  in  a  cubic  inch  of  space  and  it  can  be 
used  for  making  any  material  thing  in  the  Universe. 
It  can  be  used  to  make  diamonds,  or  rocks,  or  water,  or 
soup,  or  cloth,  or  rice,  or  mountains,  or  stars,  or  trace- 
chains,  or  anything  whatsoever  that  has  length  and 
breadth  and  height.  And  so  love,  real,  disinterested, 
pure  and  true  in  any  human  heart  can  be  cashed  in 
any  form  of  human  value.  In  loving,  one  possesses  all 
things.  The  fountain  and  reality  of  love  was  Jesus 
Christ.  Re  declared,  if  a  man  find  himself,  he  shall 
lose  himself,  that  is,  if  he  find  himself  in  things,  he 
shall  lose  himself  in  spirit.  But  if  he  lose  himself  in 
love,  he  finds  himself  in  spirit. 

In  society  we  have  the  divinely-implanted  rela¬ 
tions  of  men  served  up  in  terms  of  life.  As  the  mineral 
climbs  upward  to  bloom  in  the  flower,  and  as  earth  and 


—17— 


sunbeams  get  together  to  grow  in  the  oak,  so  at  last 
electricity  and  life  conjoin  to  smile  in  the  face  of  man. 
In  partnership  with  him  the  electrons  stand  np,  cor¬ 
puscles  walk  about,  atoms  sit  at  the  table,  molecules 
breathe  and  the  whole  marvelous  mixture  is  agitated 
by  the  beating  pulse.  Man  is  a  representative  and 
trustee  of  all  below  him  and  succeeds  in  compressing 
the  wonders  of  the  whole  universe  into  the  small  com¬ 
pass  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  exquisite  pounds  of  ani¬ 
mated  electricity.  In  man  the  raw  material  of  life 
finds  a  head  and  a  heart,  a  tongue  of  utterance  and  a 
face  of  beauty.  In  the  blood  which  flows  through  his 
heart  he  carries  in  solution  hills  and  streams,  winds 
and  clouds,  flowers  and  birds  and  continents  and  seas, 
and  something  of  the  content  of  the  whole  ether  sea. 

But  until  through  love  man  comes  into  relation 
with  others  of  his  kind,  he  has  no  significance.  In  the 
race  to  which  he  belongs  he  finds  his  other  and  better 
self.  When  through  love  he  comes  into  reciprocal  rela¬ 
tions  with  the  larger  and  kindred  life  of  which  he  forms 
a  part,  his  arms  become  long  enough  to  encircle  the 
globe.  In  correspondence  through  love  with  the  social 
whole  in  which  his  life  is  planted,  he  finds  it  possible  to 
multiply  the  significance  of  his  own  individuality  by 
the  social  whole  of  the  race.  Through  relation,  in 
terms  of  love,  to  all  the  sons  and  daughters  of  God,  he 
becomes  significant  and  great,  for  upon  the  supposition 
that  there  are  one  billion  five  hundred  millions  of  per¬ 
sons  like  himself  on  earth,  he  finds  his  individuality 
augmented  by  the  possession  of  three  billion  hands  to 
help  him  work,  and  of  three  billion  eyes  to  help  him  see, 
and  one  billion  five  hundred  millions  of  hearts  to  aid 
him  in  solving  the  problems  and  bearing  the  burdens  of 
life.  When  he  comes  into  relations  with  men  and  God 
through  terms  of  love,  his  existence  is  not  then  eked 
out  in  lone  Bedouin  isolation.  He  becomes  a  partner  of 
a  life  as  wide  as  humanity  and  as  illimitable  as  God,  the 
throbbing  currents  of  which  come  up  around  his  beat¬ 
ing  heart  to  refresh  it  and  to  float  its  outgoing  pulsa¬ 
tions  throughout  the  universe. 


—18— 


The  race  from  the  beginning  of  its  career  has  been 
painfully  and  slowly,  bnt  snrely,  by  means  of  love,  pull¬ 
ing  itself  together  into  one  great,  harmonious,  sympa¬ 
thetic,  human  whole.  It  is  the  unspeakable  privilege 
of  those  of  us,  who  live  at  the  beginning  of  the  twenti¬ 
eth  century,  to  see  this  work  more  advanced  than  ever 
before.  Humanity  is  united  today  as  it  never  was  be¬ 
fore,  because  human  beings  have  learned  the  secret  and 
the  wisdom  and  the  practical  results  of  loving  one  an¬ 
other  as  they  never  did  before.  The  elbows  of  the  na¬ 
tions  now  touch  and  they  are  supported  by  a  common 
commerce,  and  more  or  less  inspired  by  a  common 
hope,  and  feel  themselves  moved  to  a  common  destiny 
as  not  in  any  previous  period  of  the  world’s  history. 
By  loving,  man  finds  the  secret  of  living  a  universal 
life,  and  sees  himself  as  an  open  port,  where,  for  a 
small  contribution  to  the  multiplex  flow  of  exchanges 
passing  through  it,  he  can  take  toll  of  the  merchandise 
of  the  world. 

It  is  because  society  is  being  organized  in  accord¬ 
ance  with  the  principles  of  love  that  man  finds  it  pos¬ 
sible  to  use  the  millions  invested  in  street  car  systems 
for  5  cents  a  ride.  And  because  society  has  learned  to 
substitute  the  law  of  love  for  the  law  of  the  jungle,  man 
finds  it  possible  to  avail  himself  of  the  vast  outlay  of 
money  and  thought  which  unite  to  produce  the  morn¬ 
ing  paper  for  1  cent  a  copy.  And  because  of  this,  he 
can  use  all  the  billions  which  have  been  spent  in  the 
establishment  of  railroads,  steamship  lines,  electric 
light  plants,  shoe  factories,  iron  foundries  and  othei 
forms  of  modern  industry  to  serve  every  side  and  rela¬ 
tion  of  his  life  at  such  compensation  as  comes  within 
the  range  of  every  earnest  toiler’s  income.  No  king  or 
queen  of  ancient  times  ever  had  the  comforts  and  con¬ 
veniences  enjoyed  by  every  industrious  laboring  man 
of  today.  No  Lucullus  or  Heliogabalus  ever  fared  as 
he  does,  and  all  because  we  have  come  to  the  time 
when  man,  by  learning  the  secret  of  love,  is  able  to 
recognized  himself  as  one  factor  of  an  equation  of 
which  the  human  race  is  the  other,  and  to  the  time 


—19— 


when  the  small  factor,  which  spells  individuality,  lias 
learned  how  to  increase  its  power  and  multiply  its 
efficiency  by  the  multitudinous  immensity  of  the  larger 
factor,  which  spells  humanity. 

In  his  recent  address  before  the  British  Associa¬ 
tion,  held  in  Portsmouth  in  August,  1911,  Sir  William 
Eamsey,  the  president,  declared  that  the  common¬ 
wealth  of  Athens  attained  a  high-water  mark  in  liter¬ 
ature  and  thought,  which  has  never  quite  been  passed. 

The  reason  he  gave  for  this  was  that  a  large  propor¬ 
tion  of  its  people  had  ample  leisure  due  to  ample 
means.  They  had  time  to  think  and  time  to  discuss 
what  they  thought,  and  they  achieved  this  because 
each  Greek  freeman  had,  on  an  average,  at  least  five 
slaves,  who  did  his  bidding,  who  worked  his  mines, 
looked  after  his  farms,  and,  in  short,  saved  him  from 
manual  labor. 

Now,  we  in  the  United  States  are  much  better  off  f 

The  population  of  the  country  is,  say,  in  round  num¬ 
bers,  ninety  millions.  There  are  consumed  in  our  fac¬ 
tories  one  hundred  million  tons  of  coal  annually,  and  ^ 

Sir  William  Eamsey  said  it  is  generally  agreed  that 
the  consumption  of  coal  per  indicated  horse-power  per 
hour  is,  on  an  average,  about  five  pounds.  This 
would  give  us,  as  a  nation,  fourteen  million  horse¬ 
power  per  year.  A  single  horse-power  is  twenty-fir o 
times  as  much  as  a  single  man-power.  Fourteen  mil¬ 
lion  horse-power  are,  therefore,  three  hundred  and  fif¬ 
ty  million  man-power.  Taking  a  family  as  consisting, 
on  the  average,  of  five  persons,  our  ninety  millions 
would  represent  eighteen  million  families,  and  divid¬ 
ing  the  total  man-power  by  the  number  of  families,  we 
can  see  that  each  American  family  has,  on  the  average, 
nearly  twenty  slaves  doing  its  bidding,  instead  of  the 
five  slaves  owned  by  the  Athenian  family. 

It  is  this  that  makes  it  possible  for  America  to 
support  its  own  population,  while  contributing  a 
large  amount  to  the  support  of  the  populations  of  the 
rest  of  the  globe.  When  I  was  a  boy  down  South,  a 
man  was  thought  to  be  of  importance  if  he  owned 


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twenty  negroes.  We  have  lived  to  see  the  time  in  our 
country  when  every  American  family  has  twenty 
slaves,  not  in  the  form  of  human  flesh,  but  in  the  form 
of  physical  force  to  work  for  it. 

It  has  taken  man  thousands  of  years  to  find  the 
Philosopher’s  Stone  in  things.  For  the  future  his  en¬ 
ergy  will  be  directed  to  the  recognition  of  and  the 
practice  of  love,  which  is  the  Philosopher’s  Stone  in 
the  realm  of  humanity.  The  discovery  of  this  is  not 
new,  but  the  attempt  to  practically  apply  it  to  human 
affairs  in  this  world  is  new.  Up  to  within  recent  years 
the  general  working  theory  has  been  that  love  is  a 
good  thing  for  heaven,  but  an  impractical  thing  in  the 
hard,  work-a-day  world  this  side  the  grave.  But  v;e 
have  arrived  at  such  a  crisis  in  our  relations  and  strug¬ 
gles  that  human  beings  of  insight  and  leading  are  be¬ 
ginning  to  feel  that  the  only  way  out  of  our  entangle¬ 
ments,  national,  international,  political,  social,  and 
commercial,  is  by  the  divinely-ordained  highway  of 
love.  Preachers  from  Job  to  Phillips  Brooks  have 
been  saying  this  all  along,  but  the  heedless  world 
rushed  headlong,  practicing  the  principles  of  the  jun¬ 
gle  in  the  domain  of  human  affairs.  They  felt  the 
preachers  were  right  in  a  transcendental  sense.  Just 
now  they  are  beginning  to  see  that  the  preachers  are 
right  in  every  sense  for  this  world  and  all  worlds. 


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